Following a two-day visit to Serbia by Clint Williamson, the Chief Prosecutor of the EU Special Investigative Task Force, SITF, his team announced that the next step is to find out more about the people who disappeared during the Kosovo conflict.

“We will continue our investigative work and this will obviously involve interviews with witnesses in Serbia, including those who have information relevant to the disappearance of individuals during the Kosovo conflict and its aftermath,” Juri Las, a spokesperson of the SITF, told the local media.

The investigation into organ harvesting follows the release of a report by Dick Marty, the then human rights rapporteur at the Council of Europe, in December 2010.

The 2010 report alleges that some elements of the KLA, including Kosovo's Prime Minister Hasim Tachi, had trafficked the organs of prisoners during the 1999 conflict.

Williamson met Serbia’s President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, who expressed their support and pledged that Serbian government institutions would continue to fully cooperate with the investigation, the SITF announced after the meetings.

Williamson declined to comment further on the meetings, saying that the investigation is ongoing.

According to the statement issued by the President’s office after the meeting with Williamson, the EU team’s investigations will extend to other alleged war crimes that took place during the Kosovo conflict, as well as the organ trafficking allegations.

Vladimir Vukcevic, the Serbian Chief Prosecutor for War Crimes, who also met Williamson, said that the Serbian prosecution had presented new evidence to their EU colleagues regarding organ harvesting in Kosovo and Albania.

The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.

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The Balkan Transitional Justice initiative is a regional initiative which has been supported by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO and Robert Bosch Stiftung that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia).